Eagle Forum Legislative Alerts

Thursday, October 11, 2012

After a genuinely grassroots Republican platform committee produced a principled document on a plethora of issues, including immigration, some people who were not part of the process are promoting pro-amnesty proposals. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Jon Huntsman suggested that President Obama's executive order offering work permits to 1.6 million illegal immigrants doesn't go far enough. The facts do not support the pie-in-the-sky views of those, such as Jon Huntsman, who say they want to increase immigration because it will boost our sagging economy. A new study by the Center for Immigration Studies reports that the economic progress made by all immigrants, legal, illegal, and their U.S.-born children under age 18, lags far behind people born in the United States, nearly half remain below the poverty line.

The 2010-2011 census data found that 43 percent of immigrants who have been in the United States at least 20 years are receiving welfare benefits. That figure is nearly twice as high as welfare given to persons born in the United States. Immigrant children account for one in five public school students, and one in four public school students speaks a language other than English at home.

Immigrant households account for half of all overcrowded households. Only 2 percent of people born in the United States live in overcrowded households, compared to 13 percent of immigrant households. Only 7 percent of adults born in the U.S. have not finished high school, but that's true of 28 percent of adult immigrants. That is a major reason for their low economic status and prospects.

One of the great myths about immigrants is that they are doing jobs that Americans will not do. The truth is that people born in the United States are the majority of workers in all the jobs where immigrants are reputed to be especially needed, such as janitors, maids, construction laborers, butchers and meat processors. Legal and illegal immigration over the last 10 years has caused 80 percent of our total population growth, but it is a big myth that this has increased our economic wealth. Even after immigrants have been in the United States for 20 years, they are still well behind native Americans in economic well-being.